Tools & Delivery

Jammer's Review

Star Trek: The Original Series

"Friday's Child"

Air date: 12/1/1967
Written by D.C. Fontana
Directed by Joseph Pevney

Review by Jamahl Epsicokhan

Just how much treachery and deception can fit into a single hour of Trek? That seems to be the most useful question to ask of "Friday's Child," an episode full of double-crosses and marginally clever traps and tricks.

The plot involves Kirk, Spock, and McCoy (and a soon-to-be-dead red-shirt) beaming down to Capella IV to negotiate a deal for minerals with the warlike tribes living there. The Klingons, however, are also there to negotiate, and the treachery between the Klingons and the Capellas—and even a struggle within the Cappella tribes' own hierarchy—quickly becomes a free-for-all. The landing party escapes imprisonment, but not before the show begins suffering from the fact it seems D.C. Fontana kept randomly inserting "[FIGHT SCENE]" into the script. Meanwhile on the Enterprise, Scotty chases a distress signal from a freighter. The signal turns out to be a Klingon forgery intended to lure the Enterprise away from Capella so the Klingons can thwart the landing party and plunder the minerals, but Scotty discovers the trick in time.

The editing technique with the cross-cutting storylines is rather annoying, switching back and forth so frequently that it's hard to care much about either storyline. The episode benefits from some great lines and sarcastic looks from Mr. Spock, and also some chemistry between McCoy and the pregnant Eleen (Julie Newmar), but it's not enough to save an hour so lacking in direction that it becomes a disjointed sum of its parts. What a shame to waste such effective outdoor photography.

11 comments on this review

Am I crazy? Friday's Child is one of my favorite episodes. First of all,
this is McCoy at his "take no b.s." best and I agree that McCoy and the
chief's wife have chemistry. I also found the customs of the clan to be
really interesting.

One of the things that gets me in general is the occasional lack of
discipline among the Enterprise crew. They land on the plant, Redshirt sees
a Klingon, and he just steps out and fires? Doesn't wait for an order or
anything? It doesn't seem very Kirklike to allow that sort of thing.

You can see how much reinterpretation the Klingon species receives later on
in the Star Trek Universe by looking at this episode. The concept of honor
is wholly absent from the Klingon parts of the script and there were
several instances where the character is fearful, irrational and impotent.

If TOS didn't need villains so badly, we may never have seen the Klingon
species develop.

@Moonie: Presumably, the Klingons would have had to deal with the
Capellans, who were quite formidable even if they were backward. Remember,
this is before Klingons lived for battle. TOS Klingons were more like TNG
Romulans or Cardassians.

But the Prime Directive issue is certainly hard to figure, though this is
far from the only example of TOS forgetting it existed.

There are some good things to this episode -- I agree that there is
chemistry between McCoy and Eleen, for instance. The reappearance of the
Klingons here is what actually establishes them as recurring villains --
and while that strictly speaking could have happened in "any" episode, I
think that it's important that it happens in a semi-serious context again
before the Klingon threat gets threaded into the comedy in "Tribbles." The
Scotty story is too long and protracted (especially so soon after a similar
"Scotty investigates, very slowly" subplot in "Metamorphosis") but
basically decent, with a good use of the "fool me once..." adage by Scott.
So that's good.

The episode really is *so* all over the place. Jammer's statement that it's
as if FIGHT SCENE was randomly inserted all over the script is right on. In
general, this episode feels like a filmed first draft -- with huge sections
of the plot either unexplained (dropping us in the middle of a Capella
uprising somewhere in the first act, why the new Tier decides to let Eleen
live when it's against the rules and she's just lied, why Eleen lied about
killing the Earthmen, why Kirk starts shooting at the Capellans at all at
the end) or halfheartedly described in a log entry (such as Kirk's saying
that Eleen hates her unborn child in a log). The editing is frequently
terrible, with unusually bad continuity and some shots with odd, washed-out
colours. Behaviour is all over the place -- what's up with Kirk's defeatist
revenge at the end, or, as discussed, the crewman's randomly getting ready
to shoot a Klingon and Kirk et al.'s non-reaction to it? And there are
other things that might not, strictly speaking, be errors, but are just so
*weird*, like the suggestion that McCoy has spent three months with these
people before this episode (...like, between last episode and this one? or
pre-series? or, what?) which quickly becomes irrelevant to the plot, or the
way in which Scotty's log entry is filmed with Scotty standing up,
delivering the log entry, and signing a pad in the middle of it, instead of
the usual voice-over (the style which is still used for Kirk's voice
overs).

More generally, the episode has one of the least cohesive narratives up to
this point in TOS (obviously, season three this problem more and more); the
initial goal, to sign a trade treaty, gets ditched very early on and then
the plot becomes merely a halfhearted "Kirk et al. must escape" scenario,
wherein it's actually really unclear what the Capellan's emotional reason
for pursuing Kirk is anyway, besides "they like rules," and the Klingon
keeps stirring up trouble. Even this overarching desire -- get back to the
ship -- sort of dissipates once Scotty arrives with a landing party, and
the Capellans suddenly drop their desire to kill the humans, presumably
because they're outnumbered now?, and they inexplicably sign a mining
treaty at the end after all that. The Enterprise plotline seems to be
building, eventually, to a fight with the Klingon cruiser, which gets
resolved offscreen with the Klingons apparently backing down. The pregnancy
at least gives some mild sense of focus to the proceedings, even if it
leads to some annoying moments and some particularly unconvincing labour
pains from Newmarr.

Anyway, I guess I'd say that it's not boring -- I *enjoyed* watching it
more than "Catspaw," even to take recent episodes. But it's *such* a mess.
1.5 stars, I think.

I love Jammer's reviews. Often so spot on. But I do agree with Paul that
you were too hard on this one. I find I enjoy watching this episode again
and again. I'm not sure why. Maybe for one thing, like Grant said, the
chemistry between McCoy and the chief's wife. Mac-coy, the child is yours.
I love that. And the colorful visuals of the Cappelan village and clothing.
And the unremitting evil of the early Klingons. And I gotta say, the
Cappelans are not boring. A very different brutal culture. Lots of great
humor and writing here too. Overall, one of my favorite TOS episodes.

So many unanswered questions. First, why would they beam down armed with
phasers? They were there to negotiate, not fight. And just how many people
did the Tier rule? How big was his territory? Was it the only territory on
the planet with access to the minerals? If Maab was one of the Tier's
highest ranking subordinates, wouldn't he be off somewhere else in what
must have been a huge domain, acting as a kind of governor? And what did
McCoy do on that planet for three months - spend the entire time trying to
change their minds about medicine and hospitals? And though he knew the
culture, how come McCoy didn't seem to actually know any individuals on the
planet? Scotty was lured away by a false distress signal, only later
realizing that the enterprise was mentioned by name, when there was no
reason a freighter would have known the enterprise was in that sector. So
basically, Scotty screwed up. And when they reached the place the ship was
supposed to be, there was absolutely no physical evidence to support that a
vessel had been there, much less been under attack. And STILL, Uhura
wondered if the distress call could have been legit. By the way, it was
never explained why, when a federation freighter would not have known that
the enterprise was in the area, how the Klingons got this information. The
Klingon ship was so far away, checkov couldn't even be sure they WERE
Klingon ships, much less read the name on the ship!

But the most inexplicable aspects of this episode came near the end. Why
didn't the Klingon have any backup? His ship was nearby. And why did Maab
commit suicide? He acted as though the only way to defeat the Klingon was
to lure him into the open so that one of the warriors could get him with
that thrown weapon. But the Klingon was barely under any cover at all, and
was already wounded. And he wasn't even that far away. And he was just one
guy. And when the Klingon was killed, everyone seemed to relax, as if there
was no reason to fight anymore. The natives seem to have forgotten that
Kirk and Spock shot, and presumably killed, a couple of the natives by
then. Now, recall at the beginning of the episode, a redshirt who drew his
weapon was instantly executed. So how come when Scotty shows up with a
weapon drawn, he is not similarly killed? And why did Scotty beam down in
the first place? Wouldn't it have been easier to simply beam the landing
party up?